the opposite wall. Whatever was comical in this scene, and whatever was pathetic, I sincerely believe I perceived in my corner, whether I demonstrated or not, quite as well as I should perceive it now. I made out my own little character and story for every man who put his name to the sheet of paper. I might be able to do that now, more truly: not more earnestly, or with a closer interest. Their different peculiarities of dress, of face, of gait, of manner, were written indelibly upon my memory. I would rather have seen it than the best play ever played; and I often thought about it afterwards, over the pots of paste-blacking, often and often. When I looked, with my mind's eye, into the Fleet-prison during Mr. Pickwick's incarceration, I wonder whether half-a-dozen men were wanting from the Marshalsea crowd that came filing in again, to the sound of Captain Porter's voice!' When the family left the Marshalsea they all went to lodge with the lady in Little-college-street, a Mrs. Roylance, who has obtained unexpected immortality as Mrs. Pipchin; and they afterwards occupied a small house in Somers-town. But, before this time, Charles was present with some of them in Tenterdenstreet to see his sister Fanny receive one of the prizes given to the pupils of the royal academy of music. 'I could not bear to think of myself - beyond the reach of all such honourable emulation and success. The tears ran down my face. I felt as if my heart were rent. I prayed, when I went to bed that night, to be lifted out of the humiliation and neglect in which I was. I never had suffered so much before. There was no envy in this.' There was little need that he should say so. Extreme enjoyment in witnessing the exercise of her talents, the utmost pride in every success obtained by them, he manifested always to a degree otherwise quite unusual with him; and on the day of her funeral, which we passed together, I had most affecting proof of his tender and grateful memory of her in these childish days. A few more sentences, certainly not less touching than any that have gone before, will bring the story of them to its close. They stand here exactly as written by him. 'I am not sure that it was before this time, or after it, that the blacking warehouse was removed to Chandos-street, Covent garden. It is no matter. Next to the shop at the corner of Bedford-street in Chandos-street, are two rather old-fashioned houses and shops adjoining one another. They were one then, or thrown into one, for the blacking business; and had been a butter shop. Opposite to them was, and is, a public-house, where I got my ale, under these new circumstances. The stones in the street may be smoothed by my small feet going across to it at dinner-time, and back again. The establishment was larger now, and we had one or two new boys. Bob Fagin and I had attained to great dexterity in tying up the pots. I forget how many we could do, in five minutes. We worked, for the light's sake, near the second window as you come from Bedford-street; and we were so brisk at it, that the people used to stop and look in. Sometimes there would be quite a little crowd there. I saw my father coming in at the door one day when we were very busy, and I wondered how he could bear it. 'Now, I generally had my dinner in the warehouse. Sometimes I brought it from home, so I was better off. I see myself coming across Russell-square from Somers-town, one morning, with some cold hotch-potch in a small basin tied up in a handkerchief. I had the same wanderings about the streets as I used to have, and was just as solitary and self-dependent as before; but I had not the same difficulty in merely living. I never however heard a word of being taken away, or of being otherwise than quite provided for. 'At last, one day, my father, and the relative so often mentioned, quarrelled; quarrelled by letter, for I took the letter from my father to him which caused the explosion, but quarrelled very fiercely. It was about me. It may have had some backward reference, in part, for anything I know, to my employment at the window. All I am certain of is, that, soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin (he was a sort of cousin, by marriage) told me he was very much insulted about me; and that it was impossible to keep me, after that. I cried very much, partly because it was so sudden, and partly because in his anger he was violent about my father, though gentle to me. Thomas, the old soldier, comforted me, and said he was sure it was for the best. With a relief so strange that it was like oppression, I went home. 'My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day. She brought home a request for me to return next morning, and a high character of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I should go back no more, and should go to school. I do not write resentfully or angrily: for I know how all these things have worked together to make me what I am: but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back. 'From that hour until this at which I write, no word of that part of my childhood which I have now gladly brought to a close, has passed my lips to any human being. I have no idea how long it lasted; whether for a year, or much more, or less. From that hour, until this, my father and my mother have been stricken dumb upon it. I have never heard the least allusion to it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I have never, until I now impart it to this paper, in any burst of confidence with any one, my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then dropped, thank God. 'Until old Hungerford-market was pulled down, until old Hungerford-stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude began. I never saw it. I could not endure to go near it. For many years, when I came near to Robert Warren's in the Strand, I crossed over to the opposite side of the way, to avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the blacking-corks, which reminded me of what I was once. It was a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos-street. My old way home by the borough made me cry, after my eldest child could speak. 'In my walks at night I have walked there often, since then, and by degrees I have come to write this. It does not seem a tithe of what I might have written, or of what I meant to write.' JOHN RUSKIN THE CAMPO SANTO [From "Præterita," Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts, Perhaps Worthy of Memory, in My Past Life, Vol. II., Chap. VI, 1885-1889. Library Edition, George Allen, London, 1903. RUSKIN, JOHN (1819-1900), author, artist, and social reformer; son of John James Ruskin (1785-1864), who entered partnership as wine merchant in London, 1809; brought up on strict puritanical principles; educated by Dr. Andrews, father of Coventry Patmore's first wife, and under the Rev. Thomas Dale (1797-1870) at Camberwell; studied at King's College, London; learned drawing under Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding; entered Christ Church, Oxford, 1836; won Newdigate prize, 1839; contributed verse to 'Friendship's Offering' and other miscellanies; travelled for his health, 1840-1; B.A., 1842; M.A., 1843; his first published writings were articles in London's 'Magazine of Natural History,' 1834; made acquaintance of Turner, 1840; paid first visit to Venice, 1841; published, 1843, first volume of 'Modern Painters, by a Graduate of Oxford' (his name first appeared on title-page in edition of 1851); second volume published 1846, the authorship being by that time an open secret; the third and fourth volumes appeared 1856, the fifth, 1860; married, 1848, Euphemia Chalmers Gray, daughter of George Gray, a lawyer of Perth; made acquaintance of Millais, 1851; delivered at Edinburgh, 1853, lectures on 'Architecture and Painting,' published, 1854; his marriage annulled on his wife's suit, which he did not defend, 1855; published, 1849, ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture,' which had considerable influence in encouraging the Gothic revival of the time, and 'Stones of Venice,' 3 vols. 1851-3; warmly defended the pre-Raphaelites in letters to 'The Times,' and in pamphlets, 1851; published annually, 1855-9, 'Notes on the Royal Academy'; arranged Turner drawings at National Gallery; took charge of drawing classes at Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, London, 1854-8; published 'Elements of Drawing,' 1856, and 'Elements of Perspective,' 1859; honorary student of Christ Church, Oxford, 1858; devoted himself to economic studies, and published 'Unto this Last' (some of the papers being first contributed to 'Cornhill Magazine'), 1860, 'Munera Pulveris' (contributed in part to 'Fraser's Magazine'), 1862, 'Gold,' 1863, 'Time and Tide,' 1867, and various letters and pamphlets, 1868, advocating a system of national education, the organisation of labour, and other social measures; honorary LL.D., Cambridge, 1867; between 1855 and 1870 he delivered in all parts of the country lectures, some of which were published in 'Sesame and Lilies,' 1865, 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' 1866, and 'The Ethics of the Dust,' 1866; removed, 1871, to Brantwood, Coniston Lake, where he remained till death; established 'Fors Clavigera,' a monthly letter 'to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain,' and founded, 1871, the guild of St. George on principles that 'food can only be got out of the ground and happiness out of honesty,' and that 'the highest wisdom and the highest treasure need not be costly or exclusive'; engaged in several industrial experiments, including the revival of the hand-made linen industry in Langdale, and the establishment of a cloth industry at Laxey, Isle of Man; inspired and was first president of "The Art for Schools Association'; first Slade professor of art at Oxford, 1870-9; again filled the post, 1883-4, and published eight volumes of lectures; founded a drawing school at Oxford and endowed a drawing-master; honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1871; suffered at times from brain fever after 1878; published at intervals during 1885-9 'Præterita,' an autobiography which was never completed; died from influenza, 20 Jan. 1900, and was buried at Coniston. A bibliography of his writings by Thomas J. Wise and James P. Smart was issued, 1893. Many of the illustrations to his works were executed from his own drawings. He inherited from his father a large fortune, all of which was dispersed, chiefly in charitable and philanthropic objects, before his death. - Index and Epitome of D. N. B. "The spirit and style of the book are thoroughly delightful, and truly represent the finer characteristics of his nature. He has written nothing better, it seems to me, than some pages of this book, whether of description or reflection. The retrospect is seen through the mellowing atmosphere of age, the harshness of many an outline is softened by distance, and the old man looks back upon his own life with a feeling which permits him to delineate it with perfect candor, with exquisite tenderness, and a playful liveliness quickened by his humorous sense of its dramatic_extravagances and individual eccentricities." CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, Vol. II, p. 221. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.] The summer's work of 1844, so far from advancing the design of “Modern Painters," had thrown me off it - first into fine botany, then into difficult geology, and lastly, as that entry about the Madonna shows, into a fit of figure study which meant much. It meant, especially, at last some looking into ecclesiastical history, some notion of the merit of fourteenth century painting, and the total abandonment of Rubens and Rembrandt for the Venetian school. Which, the reader will please observe, signified not merely the advance in sense of color, but in perception of truth and modesty in light and shade. And on getting home, I felt that in the cyclone of confused new knowledge, this was the thing first to be got firm. Scarcely any book writing was done that winter, and there are no diaries; but, for the first time, I took up Turner's "Liber Studiorum" instead of engravings; mastered its principles, practised its method, and by spring-time in 1845 was able to study from nature accurately in full chiaroscuro, with a good frank power over the sepia tinting. I must have read also, that winter, Rio's "Poésie Chrétienne," |